Dave Irwin

Irwin suffered a traumatic brain injury on a training run for an Export A Skier-Cross event on March 23, 2001 which put him in a coma for three days. He recovered slowly from the injury with severe memory loss. He and his fiancée Lynne Harrison later created the Dave Irwin Foundation for Brain Injury. The foundation was dissolved in 2016.

Irwin represented Canada at two Winter Olympic Games. At the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, Irwin finished eighth. At the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, USA, he placed eleventh.

Iriwn sustained two severe concussions during his racing career, once before the 1976, Olympics, and a second concussion before the 1980 Olympics. The first concussion was sustained on January 10, 1976 at the downhill race in Wengen, Switzerland - two weeks after his sole World Cup win at Schladming - and resulted in five days in hospital. Less than two weeks later, Irwin was back training with the ski team.

Irwin's first World Cup race was the downhill at Schladming, Austria on December 22, 1973 where he placed 14th. Two years later at Schladming, he won the downhill event in a time of 2:00.84 beating the second-place finisher, Klaus Eberhard by almost two seconds. Irwin reached the podium again in 1982 with a third-place finish at the World Cup downhill in Whistler, B.C. behind winner Peter Müller, and team mate Steve Podborski.

Dave Irwin (born July 12, 1954) is a former alpine ski racer who represented Canada at two Winter Olympic Games and won a World Cup downhill. He was one of the "Crazy Canucks", a group of Canadian downhill racers who rose to prominence on the World Cup circuit in the late 1970s. He lives in Canmore, Alberta, near the Rocky Mountains.